In practice, sub-caliber projectiles have a discarding sabot in order to pull the projectile through the weapon barrel, and, therefore, to transmit force from the discarding sabot to the projectile. A discarding sabot such as this is disclosed, for example, in DE 43 30 417 C2. This discarding sabot has a segmented, essentially hollow-cylindrical guide sabot and a driving element that is arranged on the guide sabot at the rear. The driving element is, in this case, formed by a metal plate that has essentially the same contour as the truncated-conical recess in the fin assembly, and has a relatively small aperture hole in order to ignite the tracer charge, which can be initiated by pressure, and is arranged at the rear in the projectile when the projectile is fired. This known discarding sabot has the disadvantage in that the production of the driving element is relatively complex and in that this driving element is heavy (thus, the proportion of dead load is therefore high).
DE 37 35 481 A1 furthermore discloses a sub-caliber dart projectile having an end area in the form of a solid cone, which is arranged in a discarding sabot which, at the rear, contains a solid metal plate, in the form of a disk, as a driving element. This metal plate is screwed into a segmented, cylindrical guide sabot. This known driving element is also heavy and requires a relatively large amount of assembly effort for connection to the guide sabot.
Finally, DE 33 18 972 A1 discloses a discarding sabot for a sub-caliber spinning projectile, which has a guide sabot and a driving element that is connected to it, and is in the form of a cup. In this case, the base of the driving element has a relatively thick wall and has an aperture bore so that the propellant gases, on firing the corresponding munition, can act directly on the rear planar end surface of the projectile. The side walls of the driving element extend over more than 20% of the length of the entire spinning projectile. This driving element, in the form of a cup, is also relatively complex to produce and is heavy.
The present invention is based on the object of specifying a possible way to produce the driving element easily and so that its weight is lighter than that of known comparable discarding sabots.